Dakhla

I really did lie about Laayoune it seems. The whole town was blowing up when I left the internet cafe last night. The main mosque was spewing out hoards of people, all dressed in their finest and any and every loud speaker was blaring the same tunes. It was incredible; to go from a ghost town to a party town. Fantastic.

The bus journey down to Dakhla was brilliant. Mostly rocky desert for as far as the eye can see, with the odd group of wild camels milling about by the road or just off in the distance. We turned past one large dune and a mini sand storm quickly developed, creating a soft white film over the horizon line, then it stopped as quickly as it started. Every once in a while the Atalntic would come into view, just a light blue colouring against the white sands. And, of course, police checks every 100 km or so, in the middle of nowhere. Really, officer, I'm a student. Merci bien.

The desert is truely a remarkable place.

D and I met a Californian mom(Teresa) and son(David) on the bus who are doing pretty much the same route as us, so we now had the power of 4 to aid us in finding transport to Mauritania. Then, upon arrival to our hotel, Hotel Sahara-how original- we met a lovely Spanish woman(Christina) doing the same. Ahhh, now the power of 5! Didn't take long actually. We've found a truck for a fairly good price (250 dirhams; 25 Euros, and the reception guy seems a little annoyed by it. Guess his commision was cut a bit). Had an excellent camel sandwich with fresh olives and now we're heading back to our hotel to watch the Simpsons, in English, on Dave's laptop.

Really looking forward to seeing what nothing looks like, which is the desciption Moroccans have given us of Mauritania. Pretty, they say, but there's no food and the people are poor. Guess i won't be eating any camel meat there, which, honestly, is very tasty.

Tomorrow, 9 am. Slowly I get back to Africa.